Comment by highwaylights | Hacker News Reader

Comment by highwaylights | Hacker News Reader

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There’s a few red flags here on the hiring side too.

I’ve given a lot of interviews, candidates will always try to come up with the best story as an answer to your question because “I can’t think of an example” is not an acceptable answer. It’s a demand you’re placing on them.

Also having experience puffed up on a resume happens around 100% of the time. The point of the interview is to figure out how much real relevant experience the candidate has.

OP was right to end the interview as they were an unprepared candidate and a bad fit, but low-key threatening someone with “word gets around” who’s trying to find a job and probably starting to panic about not having one doesn’t make him the good guy in this story that he thinks it does.

OP could have just told them not to use AI in future, but even that’s unnecessary as the lesson’s already been learned.

(I’ve also noticed that towards the end of the post OP mentions this, but it doesn’t line up with the actual call as described unfortunately)

> having experience puffed up on a resume happens around 100% of the time

Maybe I am the rounding error. I have zero puffery, exaggerations, embellishments, stolen credit, or lies on my resume.

Me, too.

But, sadly, OP is right.

When doing a technical screen I'll sometimes pick a skill the person claims to have, and ask them the simplest possible non-trivial question I can ask.

For example, let's say you list 'SQL' as one of the skills on your CV. I might show you a SQL statement like:

  SELECT id, start_date FROM employees;

(EDIT: I meant SELECT id, start_date FROM employees ORDER BY id;)

I'll tell you id is an auto-increment field, and ask whether the result would show the newest employee at the top or the bottom.

You have a 50/50 chance of getting it right. If you get it wrong, I'll tell you the answer. Getting it wrong wouldn't disqualify you.

Then I'll ask you how to get it in the opposite order.

I am expecting you to immediately say 'add DESC'. If you can't answer that question in under 2 seconds, you probably haven't written enough SQL to justify listing it as a skill on your CV.

You would be surprised at how many people fail simple tests just like this one.

(I won't use this particular one again.)

> You have a 50/50 chance of getting it right.

What is the right answer? Doesn't it depend on the DB? Postgres at least shows rows ordered by last updated time (simplified, I know).

I would be fine if it was "... near the top or bottom" though.

(Or maybe this comment is the correct answer?)

Sorry, I wrote this in a hurry. Of course I would have included an ORDER BY clause.

The one without that clause was still fun to think about, so no harm done!

Yes me too, zero, and I'm pretty sure it's closer to zero than to 100% among others also, here where I live

I'm together with sethammons in that "rounding error". I actually go further and explicitly list things which I'm not good at on my resumé.

If you’re really good at what you do, there’s no need to embellish. Company is looking for five years of experience in something that’s only been available for four years? Screw ‘em, you don’t want to work at such a stupid place anyway. Good employers know how to find good employees.

I was sharing this story and responding to various comments (here) in my conversations elsewhere on the Internet, and as part of my statements I questioned about quoting/paraphrasing the "word gets around" to determine if this is best way to reference the point, and thought I may as well share it here too. https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_c0378709-b716-48af-8996-a0e4...

Thanks, interesting point and it hadn’t occurred to me that it would read like a direct quote.

I can’t edit it now, so will leave this here to say that it’s not a direct quote.

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